Last week I visited the Kimpton Fitzroy Hotel in London, one of the capital’s finest.
It sits on Russell Square close to the British Museum and the University of London, and it is a grand pile.
It first came to my attention when Starwood Capital Group took over its management under its much-loved, and missed, Principal Hotels brand.
Starwood, being a private-equity firm, flipped a portfolio that included all 10 Principal hotels to French real estate investment trust Foncière des Régions, now Covivio, for £858 million, which today equates to $964.5 million but was at the time equated to $1.17 billion.
The buyer, in turn, gave management to IHG Hotels & Resorts, which saw in the Fitzroy a perfect addition to its Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants brand. After investing a good dollop of cash, it is what it is today, a wonderful London hotel that stands proud with the very best.
Its general manager Garreth Walsh gave me a tour of the hotel, along with a history lesson.
I was fascinated to learn that the expression “to get dolled up” comes from this hotel.
The hotel opened in 1900 thanks to the architectural knowhow of one Charles Fitzroy Doll, who was asked on its opening to make the façade a little more showy.
He went to town, apparently, hence the expression we all use today to get “all dolled up.”
The front of the hotel features statues of all four queens of England and the United Kingdom up to the time of its opening — Mary, Elizabeth I, Mary II and Victoria.
The interior is no less spectacular, and the 334 guest rooms and suites are sumptuous.
There are a couple of sites guests love to see.
The first is a marble mosaic of the zodiac; the second is Lucky George, a bronze statue of a dragon attached to the grand staircase. Of course, guests love to rub its head for good luck, although perhaps not too many considering it has not lost its luster.
Walsh explained that Fitzroy Doll designed two dragons, the other one being on the ill-fated ocean line, RMS Titanic. Indeed, one dining room at the Fitzroy also had a doppelganger on board the ship, both also designed by Fitzroy Doll, who studied his craft in the practice of Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt — they had some epic names back then did architects. Fitzroy Doll's son, Christian Charles Tyler Doll, also an architect, redesigned the steps of the Palace of King Minos in Knossos, Crete, which, incidentally, was the first place abroad I visited that opened my eyes to the wonders of travel.
The history of such hotels — and a number of them in London rattle off the tongue — is truly a thing of wonder.
Fitzroy Doll also designed another hotel, also on Russell Square, but it was not so loved, being demolished in the 1960s.
There were critics of Fitzroy Doll’s work, who considered his art too fanciful.
One, the art critic Nikolaus Pevsner, described the Fitzroy when it was first opened as the Imperial Hotel as a “vicious mixture of Art Nouveau Gothic and Art Nouveau Tudor.”
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